As the story starts to unfold, you have no idea that Hansberry is willing to go that far (unless you’ve seen other adaptations, including the 1961 movie with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Louis Gossett Jr. and Diana Sands repeating their Broadway stage roles). The first 15 or 20 minutes seem to be just a slice of life as the Younger family rises early to start their day in a tiny but tidy Chicago South Side apartment. There’s breakfast to cook, a child to rouse for school and a race to the apartment building’s community bathroom to be run.

Even though the play is written as three acts, director Seret Scott here has divided the show into two, which makes for a long first act but keeps the momentum naturally arching over 2 1/2 hours with a 15-minute intermission.

So after that languid prologue, we are jolted by the spiraling issues that come into play as the Youngers wait for a substantial insurance payment that could mean a new life for the working-class family of housekeepers and a chauffeur.

For the matriarch, Lena (fully embodied by Pat Bowie), it means finally being able to buy a house for her family with a back yard for gardening — even if it means moving to a white neighborhood. For her son, Walter Lee (Ethan Henry, masterful in a real workout of a role), and his wife, Ruth (Shirine Babb, so natural, so effortless), it means an investment opportunity for him and security for their expanding family for her. For Lena’s daughter, Beneatha (Joniece Abbott Pratt, adequately dealing with the soaring, more-poetic parts of the script), the check offers the chance to finish medical school.

HARRISBURG — The State Supreme Court has rejected Attorney General Kathleen Kane's attempt to throw out a grand jury investigation into whether she or someone in her office leaked investigative secrets to a newspaper to discredit critics.

Catasauqua police officer Scott M. Rothrock had already been stabbed once in the chest with a 13-inch butcher knife and was trying to block more thrusts as he lay on his back in a snow bank Feb. 23 in east Allentown.